Article June 23, 2014 Issue

A sea view

Debbie Peck

Throughout my childhood, I enjoyed every summer with my family at the seashore. From an early age, my brother and I learned to enjoy and thrive in the ocean. One of our favorite activities was bodysurfing. We loved to swim out to the break line and catch a big wave and ride it as far as we could to shore. We were equally adept at diving beneath the big waves in order to get out to the break line! We were taught that the waves come in groups, often in sets of seven. We would patiently wait for those waves and then surf our favorite to shore. I think about handling those waves as a young bodysurfer as a perfect metaphor for handling my thought in Christian Science when faced with a sea of conflict or troubles.

Facing sickness can often seem as daunting as facing a big, serious wave as a bodysurfer. Do I let it break over me and get thrown around by the embroiled surf? Or do I, in seeing it coming, handle it by diving under it—getting out of reach of what surfers call the “soup,” trying to pull me down and under, sometimes battering me on the sandy ocean’s bottom?

I love thinking that the seven wave maxim I learned as a bodysurfer is a reminder that, when waves of sickness start rolling in, I have the seven synonyms of God—Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love—to buoy me up against the turbulence (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 465).